Bengals Booth Podcast: Remember The Time

initial Ring of Honor class. Mike has tremendous stories to share, like feeling the earth move when Corey Dillon ran by, laughing at the sight of a scrawnye Chris Collinsworth with his shirt off at the NFL scouting combine, and traveling to tiny Augustana College to scout the greatest quarterback in franchise history, Ken Anderson. I think you'll really enjoy our conversation.

The Bengals Booth Podcast is presented by bud Light. Seltzer Refreshed the Game and here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing on iTunes, Stitch, your Google Play, Spotify, or pod Bean. It's the greatest thing since learning how to type. It's been a long time since I graduated from high school. I don't remember anything about algebra, trigonometry, and despite taking Spanish for several years,

and even spending time abroad as an exchange student. All I can do now in the Spanish language is count to eight. It's pitiful. But the one thing I learned in high school that hasn't slipped at all is the ability to type. I remain relatively fast and accurate, and it's been an essential skill in my profession. So thank you, missus King, my typing teacher at Southwestern High I've never had to hunt and peck thanks to you. Now, let's

get to the Bengals Ring of Honor. This Monday morning, May twenty fourth, at nine am, Ring of Honor voting begins for Bengal season ticket members. Voting will last until June eighteenth. That's roughly four weeks, and anybody it has season tickets or purchases them by June eighteenth is eligible to vote. The first two members of the inaugural class are Paul Brown and Anthony Munio's. The final two members will be chosen from a ballot that features seventeen former players.

Nobody knows more about the group or has better stories to tell about them than Bengals President Mike Brown. We sat down in his office this week to look back at nineteen legendary figures in team history. The Bengals are adding a Ring of Honor in twenty twenty one. The initial class will include Hall of famers Paul Brown and Anthony Munio's along with two players that will be voted

in by season ticket members. And today we are going to reminisce about the candidates with Bengals President Mike Brown. Let's start with your dad, arguably the most innovative coach in sports history. You obviously have a unique perspective at your father, But what stands out when you think of your dad as a football coach? Oh, many things. He was very successful as a coach. He was extremely organized and he had an ability to cut through things to

get to what mattered. For example, his practices were the shortest of any team, and he did that because he felt people could only concentrate so long before they lost their ability to apply themselves. I think that was true. He didn't break up his players and practices they were almost non contact. The contact they had was just a player two on Fridays and the rest of it was running against dummies. Everyone understood you weren't supposed to hit

the guy and they didn't. They knew that they shouldn't, and so the teams were healthy teams. Generally, he was imaginative. He did things ahead of his times that became every day procedures for modern practices. The things that he did that were different that people know about are the face mask, and that came about when Otto Graham had his face cut up when a forty nine Ers player plowed into

him as they went out of bounds. The next week at practice, my dad said, the equipment manager for the Browns, get the face masks, not the heavy kind of iron face masks that then existed, but one that would be light and wouldn't interfere with Otto's vision. They came up with an extruded plastic bar that was as strong as need be, and that's what they used. It became the basis for what is today the standard face mask. It's

a light piece of equipment and it provided vision. In other words, the vision wasn't interrupted or interfered with, as the old style face masks seemed to do. He was good at innovation on the field. The plays they used. The one story that a lot of people know is how the draw play came into existence. The draw plays a regular part of football today. It first was used by the Old Browns. It happened when Battle Graham faded back to pass and Marion Motley and he collided. One

of them had to be wrong. Neither admitted to it. The ball popped up in the air. Marian saw it in the air above his head, reached up, grabbed it, tucked it away, looked up, saw an opening that was just a natural opening, and ran through it for a good game. And the next day, when my father and his coaches were looking at the play, they saw what happened, they made it into a regular play. He had the ability to see something that went awry and make something

useful out of it. The other thing that a lot of people remember about him is that he integrated his team, the Browns, that when football was still segregated, and he signed Bill Willis and Marion Motley. They were the two players that broke the color line in the old All American Football Conference that was in nineteen forty six. It took ten years or longer for teams to catch up with that, and it never occurred to him that it

should be otherwise. Beyond that, he was smart enough to know that these two guys could play football and that would help his team make it better. That weighed with him, and he would freely say so, but that was good. I once heard Jim Brown said that was the right reason to do what he did, not some kind of do good or a reason, but because he thought they deserved the same answers to anybody else. And that was what my father did believe, and that's what he acted

on when others weren't prepared to do that. So in many ways, the few I just recited our examples. He was ahead of his times, but he wore that in a very unassuming way. It never occurred to him that anything was special about it. It was just, well, why don't we do this, It's a better way to do it. And off they went and did it, and it worked and made his teams better, made them more successful than the competition. He had a wonderful clear mind. He was a great coach and I thought a great father. I

respect him to my core to this day. I tell the story where he would come in the room and say, Mike, it would be two feet up in the air doing whatever he told me to do, before he even it even registered with me what it was that he was told me to do so. He had my attention, but he had the attention of his players too. They had a good relationship with him after they played. He was friends with them. They were many of them dear friends

of his in later life. But when they played, he kept his distance and he insisted that they live up to the code. You made Anthony Munio as the third pick in the draft back in nineteen eighty. Several other NFL teams rolled him out, at least in the first few rounds because he had had three knee surgeries at USC. That decision certainly paid off. He is widely considered to be one of the best tackles in NFL history. We

think he was the greatest tackle and NFL history. Anthony was well known in coweage as a top player, but his senior year he was injured. I think it was in their first game and he didn't play until the final game USC had that year. That was the Rose Bowl when they played Ohio State. It just happened that my brother, Pete and I were out in California visiting my father who had a home out there, and the three of us sat on the couch to watch the Rose Bowl and we began to laugh and chuckle because

Anthony was dominating. He just was, Oh, I've never seen anything better. And we knew or thought we could get him. Well. We had this reputation for a bad knee, and we asked our team to doctor doctor George Bellu to tell us whether he was okay or not. And doctor Bellu said, in his opinion, he was okay, and we took that as the standard and we accepted it. I think some other teams questioned it. Who knows. Anyway, we had Anthony

and what a great player he was. You knew it the minute he walked in that you had something special with him. He had all the physical dimensions at the time he would have been a big man with long arms, and more than that, he had this athletic ability that just popped right out. He could move like a little man, and he could bend his knees and he could retain his balance. He was very well coached in college, and he came here with a style of play that was right at the top. He was a equally great run

blocker and pass protector. I remember when we played Buffalo and Bruce Smith, Yes, you remember Bruce Smith. Was the defensive for Buffalo thirty young in his career back then, and maybe just learning Anthony was at his peak ability and Anthony dominated him. He just kept him from getting anywhere near the passer and on run plays he flowed him right into the ground. It was an example of Anthony at his best against another player who became a

Hall of Fame player. We had not only a great player, an Anthony, we had a great individual, good person, person that has dedicated his life after football to work in the community. If you know him personally, he's someone who's easy to like, you are drawn to him. So we had ourselves a great player, and it's so easy joy When you get one like that, it just makes everything else work a little bit better. And we were better because we had Anthony, a Hall of Famer in every

sense of the word. So your dad and Anthony Munio's make up half of the inaugural Ring of Honor class. Seventeen others are on the ballot. We're going to look at them alphabetically, beginning with a quarterback that you traveled to Rock Island, Illinois to scout at tiny Augustana College, Ken Anderson, and here's what you wrote in your scouting report quote discounting experience, this is the best quarterback prospect I have seen in college. Well, I liked him. The

story behind that amuses me still. My brother Pete was her scouting director. We were always talking about players. He said to me, well, there's this guy out at Augustana. I said, Augustana, where it's that. I guess there are at least two of them there. Made me more. But this was right on the Mississippi River, a Quad Cities area, and Pete had heard about the guy from another scout in a conversation. He wasn't especially well known by the public, if known at all. I went out there and watched

a game. He was acron He threw the ball with what I call a classic motion, which was a type motion the way you draw it up, and his release was close to perfect, meaning the ball came off in a dead spiral. He was athletic, He could move around. He could find people down field. Of course, in that league, the people downfield might have been five foot tall. There's

a story of Kenny later in life. He would get together with his players Sam Augustan, and I remember seen him with the offensive tackle on that team who came up to Kenny's shoulder, but you could tell it didn't matter what the level of competition was. He showed that he was special. We brought him in after we drafted him, and I sort of took pride in his being our pick.

We were out at spinning Field, our old practice facility, and the first day Kenny was there, they put him out in the field, the coaches to see what he would could do, and it was just dreadfully he couldn't. He could hit the sight of a barn. And remember my dad looking at me. This process unfolded, but nothing was said. We went forward and the course reverted to form, and it became a great player for us, that's for sure. Up next another Anderson, the great Road Greater at right tackle.

Willie Anderson a gigantic three hundred and forty pound man and certainly one of the best offensive linemen of his era, any era. He was special. Willie was massive and he had quick feet, the feet of the answer. He had

long arms. When anyone got to him, it didn't do him much good because he was so big and strong and they couldn't throw him off balance, and he could dance with them, glide with them to the outside when they tried to get around to the outside, so they couldn't go outside, they couldn't go inside, They didn't go anywhere. They just stayed where they were, and we had a right tackle that was as good a right tackle as this league has seen. He should be in the Hall

of Fame along with Anthony. As a pair there was. There wouldn't have been two better than those two. I am glad that he's a candidate for our Ring of Honor, and I'm sure he will be selected soon. We moved to the all time leading scorer in team history and the Bengals kicker for thirteen years wearing that little size five shoe on his kicking foot, Jim Breach. We came

up with Jimmy. He was let go by Oakland and I don't know what I'll befell him out there, but he came here and he wasn't long as kickers go, but he was a great competitor. You could turn up the heat on him and it didn't matter. We'd be in a game where we had to have a field goal to win it, and when he was kicking, he didn't have much concern about it because he just was good for it. He made him all it seemed. That might seem to the casual observer as nothing so special.

Why shouldn't he That's what he's paid to do. They might say, Well, believe me, that's not what most of them do do. They don't manage to hold up when the pressure's on. But Jimmy did for us for a good number of years. I think he still has the most points of anyone ever with the Bengals, never missed a kick in overtime, A perfect nine for nine Jim Breech. I've heard the next player on the list referred to as the toughest player pound for pound in team history,

running back James Brooks. James was a player we acquired from San Diego. We traded Pete Johnson, who was a fine player, and we got in return James Brooks. They were opposites. Pete was a big power back. James was an offsized, fast, quick scooter. He could catch the ball, had wonderful hands, great receiver. He was excellent running two. You would have misjudged him if you looked at him and said, well, he's too small to be a great runner. But he was a great runner, not just outside but

inside as well. And he did one other thing that was exceptional. He was a terrific pass protector. He was small, but he knew how to go about pass protection. He took these rushers on. They could be big people, defensive lineman, and he would pop right up into him and jolt them. He didn't back down, he wasn't afraid, and he knew which ones to pick up. That too, takes a little bit of skill. You have to sort him out, and he could and did so. He had everything that a

back should have. He could run the ball, he could pass protect, he could catch the ball. And you referred to him as tough. Well, I don't know for sure sometimes exactly what tough is, but if you're talking about it meaning a football player who did everything ask of him, James Brooks was a game in nineteen eighty one. Your top two draft picks were wide receivers, the sculptor David Verser out of Kansas in round one, and then a skinny, gangly kid out of Florida in a round two who

turned out to be pretty darn good, Chris Collinsworth. The story on Chris goes back to when they had what was the equivalent of the combine. In those days, it was down in Tampa. They way and major players and work them out. They did that back then differently, but they did it then as they do it today over

in Indianapolis when we have the combine. Chris walked out on the not the stage as it would be today, but he walked out in front of the assembled scouts, which were probably twenty some days in the room, looking up at the scales where the players would be weighed. And Chris got on the scales and you could hear the snickers. And Chris understood, he knew what was going on in their minds, and he, to his credit, laughed

and they laughed with him. I forgot what he weighed, but it certainly wasn't very much, and he was tall six four plus and just as skinny as you could draw one up. So when it came to the draft, we picked David Verser in the first round, who had all the majorables you could imagine, very fast, good size, very productive, and a player in college. And then in the second round Linda and Fante, who was an assistant coach for us, the equivalent of the offensive coordinator, if

you will. I don't think we gave him that title. No one had titles back in those days. He argued for Chris and my father, who could say yay or nay on the draft as to which player we took or didn't take. He kept hearing Lindy when we were in the first round, and then in the second round. He didn't give up. He still went on and my father said, all will take him too. We doubled up on receivers. And what a good thing it was for

us that we did. When Chris came on a recall, being out a Spinney field our practice site and watching and you knew immediately you had a special player. He was for a big guy, tall guy quick. He could move side sideways quickly, and he had acceleration, he had top end speed, he could catch everything, and he seemed to have his wits about him all the time. You knew right away that you had a special player. And

occasionally you you have that experience. You drafted guy, he comes in and you just know you have one, and when you get the good ones, that's what makes your team special. And he was one of those. A great receiver. He played the role of country bumpkin early in his career, but went on to get a law degree. It's had a great broadcasting career. He's the honor of Pro Football Focus. Obviously a guy that's had a tremendous career after football. Yes,

he's been very successful in his endeavors after football. I remember what you were referring to Country Bumpkin. He put on an act if you will, that the ah shucks, poor country boy me. How could you expect me to know anything? And that's when he was being interviewed by the media. But he wasn't that way with the guys

or anybody else. That was just something that he tried out for a while and to his credit, discarded not soon enough and became his real self, which is all you would need to be very successful in a media career. And just look at the success he's had. You know you're great. If you forced the league to change the rules and wide receiver is Curtis was getting mugged so badly by defensive backs that your father convinced the league to pass a role only allowing contact for the first

five yards from the line of scrimmage. So they say, now, the reality of that one is that the offense in the National Football League had ground down. The defense had come to dominate, and back in those days you had to pass protect with your hands against your chest, and you had to run patterns against cornerbacks who could bump you, push you, cut you, shove you all over the field. Well,

that made it hard to throw the ball. And there came the time when finally my father who was on the competition committee, Don Shula Tex Sram they were on the competition committee, and they met about the predicament the league had found itself in, and they came up with the changes in the rules which allowed the use of the hands to some degree on past protection and limited bumping a receiver to five yards down field. Well, that opened the game up. For most of his career, Isaac

played under the old rules. Just at the end, when he was probably at the downside of his career, he had the benefit of the new rules. But if he had had the benefit earlier, I think he would have rewritten the record book, not just the Bengals, but the National Football League record book. He was a splendid white out. He had a great, great speed. He was fast enough to try out for the Olympics, and he was close

to making it. He had great hands, and I told the story maybe you've heard it, where he went down on the sideline against Cleveland on a go pattern and he was on the right side and reached up with his outside arm his right arm and just pulled the ball in with one hand in stride and ran away from the cornerback. And later in the game he did the same thing on the other side with his left hand and just two one handed catches that kept him

right in stride. And I've never seen anything like that since, let alone see it twice by one player in the same game. I remember we played Houston one time we had to win to get in the playoffs, and he caught a ball with Hurdley. It was like soccer extra time. I mean the clock was gone and he caught the ball and it ran through about their whole team for fifty yard touched score and it was a great, great

critical play for us. He was a top receiver. Many people would say he was the Bengals all time top receiver, and I wouldn't argue with him. We are reminiscing about the Bengals Ring of Honor candidates with President Mike Brown. The team's all time leading rushers, Corey Dillon, who ran Angry for seven years in Cincinnati and had two of the best games of all time two hundred and forty six yards as a rookie and then two seventy eight against the Broncos in two thousand, an NFL single game

record at the time. I remember that game. They couldn't stop us, and Corey just ran right over top of him. It was so bad that the next week they their defensive coordinator. I thought that was somewhat unfair. Corey was power back, and when you first saw him, what you saw was a guy that ran heavy. He was a two hundred and thirty pound guy, and when he ran he had balance. He seemed to sink into the ground as he ran. You hit him and you were hitting a stump. He had the ability to run inside, the

ability to run outside, and you say angry. I don't know if that's exactly the right word, but determined, There's no question about that. And he did have emotion. He carried it with him. He was our top runner of all time, and unfortunately we couldn't hang on to him. We couldn't manage hims. At the end, he got out of sorts about what I don't even remember, but we couldn't keep him content, so we felt obligated to trade him.

We traded him up to a Belichick in New England, and for them, he took the Patriots to two Super Bowls. So he did it here, he did it there. He could do it period wherever he was. And yes, a top player, a great player. I remember you describing observing him. I think it was at Spinnyfield early in his Bengal's tenure,

and it was like the earth moved when he got going. Oh. I remember being on the sideline and he ran by after he had caught a ball out wide, and he was close to me, and as he ran by, I honestly felt the ground shake underfoot, and that registered with me. I've never had that experience with another back, but you wouldn't have wanted to detected him if you were a cornerback. I can guarantee you that two quarterbacks have been named MVP while leading the Bengals to the Super Bowl. We

talked about Ken Anderson earlier. Now we get to Boomer Assias and one of the most charismatic leaders in team history. Boomer was a lively personality. My first experience with that is when I went up to Maryland where he played college football. A friend of mine, Jack Schiff, and we drove up there to watch him, and this was a scouting trip, I guess. Anyway, We're sitting in the stands and we happened to find ourselves amongst the Maryland football

coaches wives, and the strangest thing would happen. They would talk to Boomer as though he were right in front of him. They would Boomer, why are you you know? It just they so that somehow they connected with him. Boomer had that ability to get the attention of people, and it came with him. He brought up here. He had it. When he came in that game, he injured himself badly, hurt his shoulder. He went out of the game and came back in the second half and then played.

He was tough. He could play under harsh conditions that would be physical injury or that could be whatever else, but he was not deterred. The players liked it, and he was a leader that they all respected for his abilities as a player. But it wouldn't beyond that. He had a way of talking to him and they acknowledged him as the first amongst equals. If you will. They

listened to him. The thing that sent him apart as a player was when we had Sam Whites as their coach and our coaches came up with the no huddle offense. This was new to football back then. It had been used at the end of the halves in desperation, but what Sam and Boomer did was use it during the whole game, and this created substitution problems for our opponents.

It was all within the rules, but it upset the coaches because they didn't know how to contain the opposing coaches, and they worked on the league office to restrict what we were doing. That made a little less effective, but it was still effective and we had real success with it. We went to the Super Bowl with the Boomer and Sam and that was part of what took us there. Another of the game changers in franchise history was David Fulture.

You didn't see safeties that were sixty three, two hundred and thirty eight pounds who could be used in so many ways before him. Yeah, he was a big safety, to say the least. We Dick Laboul was our secondary coach and he took Folture and used him in a way that got out of David what he had to give. But that sounds as so I am describing a player who was slow. He wasn't slow. He was just big. And when I say big at the end of his career, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say he was

actually at two sixty. Tell me when you last saw a safety at two sixty. The way they used him, the way we used him was we had him up closer to the line of scrimming as much as possible. And not that he couldn't play deep. He could, but up front he was like an extra linebacker and he would nub him. When he hit him, they were hit and stopped. He was an exceptional player, one of a kind. I've never seen one quite like him before or since.

The Bengals all time leader in receptions, receiving yards, and names on the back of his uniform Chad Johnson slash Ocho Cinco. There was certainly never a dull moment in his ten years in Cincinnati. Chad was a splendid player, but he was even greater as a performer. He was fun. He did things on the sideline in the end zone during games. He made people smile and they liked it, and he liked it. When they liked it, that was fun for him too, and so he came to think

that was part of what he wanted to do. Probably we wished he had done a little less of it. But as a player he was excellent. He had quickness, he could get separation. And we had Kurtson Palmer as our quarterback, and the two of them connected up on this We would call it a deep end pattern. About eighteen yards down field. He would break inside away from the cornerback or hook up in case they were in his own they couldn't cover it, and he was fearless

in there. He would catch the ball no matter what the traffic was. He is a package, was unique. You had tried to keep your finger on him with all the annachs he was he's involved in, and that wasn't easy. But as a package, you would take him every time because he could win games. Were there times in situations where you didn't want to laugh, but you couldn't help yourself. Oh, there were times that I remember dimly the Oh he would be in the sideline and I don't know, he

would suddenly be kneeling and proposing to somebody. Or doing some an He had a whole list of these things that he worked on beforehand, and they were can but you couldn't help but laugh when you saw them. They were better earlier than they were later, as they were on at least for me. But I admit that he

was a entertaining player beyond his football abilities. A tenth round draft pick in nineteen eighty three, became one of the best defensive players in franchise history, a guy who led the team in tackles five times as a nose guard, which is unheard of. Tim Cromry. Yeah, Timmy came to us out of Wisconsin. He wasn't anything that we thought much about when he came. He was off size small for a defensive tackle when they went home. This was after the draft. He came when they went home. We

had to get together with the players. Later. We brought him in for some work and we didn't even bother to tell him to come because we didn't think he could do anything much. But he came anyway, which showed you how he saw the world, and he was dead right. He could do a whole heck of a lot. He became a great player, and he had tremendous competitiveness. He just would compete until he dropped. He had no give in him. He was a high school wrestler, college wrestler,

and that showed. I've always respected the kids plays who were wrestlers, because in my book, that's the toughest sport. Of all those guys, they can't quit because if they get quit, they just get demolished. They learned not to. Timmy was that way. He didn't have any quit in him. And I remember, of course, in the Super Bowl game done in Miami when he broke his leg, and that

was a tragedy for him and us both. Without him, we weren't quite the same defensively, and if he hadn't been hurt, we would have had a better chance in that game. My broadcast partner, Dave Lapham, was smart enough off the field to get admitted into Harvard although he chose Syracuse, and smart enough on the field to play all five offensive line spots in the same game multiple times. Dave was smart enough knowing questions that, but that's never what stood out about him in my mind. He went

beyond that. He was built like a football player. The first time I ever saw him, he was in his shorts and a training table at the Blue Gray Game down in Alabama, and Jeez, I looked at him and I said, this guy, he's built like they're supposed to be, big go over. He was an excellent player and he could play anywhere you needed him. But it went beyond that. He has become someone tied to the Bengals in his own special way. He was a player for us, and later he was an announcer for us. He can tell

our story. He's been around here close on to fifty years as a player and as an announcer. He knows all the guys that were here from the beginning and he can tell about them. He's a good storyteller. You know, this doesn't have much to do with being in the Ring of Honor, but as a personality, you like being around him. He's fun and that isn't something unique with me. Everyone feels that way. They gravitate towards him because he just makes the occasion happier. I'm glad he's in this list.

He's deserving. I could not agree with you more. Lap was the starting left guard on the nineteen eighty one Super Bowl team, the starting right guard in both Super Bowls. As a matter of fact, was Max Montoya, probably the greatest guard in franchise history. He was a great player. Max had a cherubic face. You would have thought he was innocent as a lamb, but he had a dark heart as a football player. He showed no mercy. He was he was rough, and he could dish it out.

He could take it when he was on the field, there was no quarter given or asked. But for us he was with a great group of offensive lineman that that group that he was a member of was my favorite of all time for us. And Max could not only block straight ahead, he could pull and run to the outside where he was very effective, probably the best pulling guard we ever had. I have a high regard for Max. He's done well with his life after football, and I respect him. I respect him as a player

and as a man. One of the many great nicknames in team history is Leaping Law Lamar, for Lamar Parish, who scored thirteen touchdowns on returns and recoveries and set a team record by averaging nearly nineteen yards per punt return in nineteen seventy four. Lamar deserves more people remembering him than do I. Don't know why. That's so. During his time here I think was about seven years he

played for US. He was the most talented cornerback we ever had, and we've had some great cornerbacks, but he was also the best returner we ever had. And the one story that he stood out in my mind about Lamar was when we played Washington here. They had a good team and we had something like three yards total offense that we didn't move the ball at all. We

won the game. We went it on returns. Lamar, on one punt return, went into a group of players that looked like a ball of players that he dove into and somehow he ran out the back end of all this accumulated group of players and went on without losing stride for a touchdown. It was a very odd looking play, and when he came off the field, my dad said, Lamar, how did it look when you ran inside with all those players? Oh? He said, coach, it was dark in there.

How he explained it. And my dad loved this story, and I loved it because he loved it. But it was just a description about Lamar, who could do exceptional things at his position. He had exceptional, unique almost quickness, he could cover like a blanket. The receivers didn't get open on him, and he could play the ball we had on the other side that Kenny was over there, and we had two corners the equal of any team ever.

And Ken Riley's the next player on our list. From nineteen sixty nine to nineteen eighty three, he intercepted sixty five passes. That's the most of anybody who was not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Came to the Bengals as a scrambling quarterback and a Rhodes Scholar candidate in college. Well, he was smart, and he was roommates with Lamar, and he could manage Lamar as best of anyone could around here. Kenny came here as a quarterback and we had Greg Cook. This was before Greed got injured.

Training camp and the quarterbacks would stay and pretty much watched Greg, and it was obvious who was going to be the quarterback. Greg was the best player we ever had, and Kenny was standing there when my dad came over about the third day he had been in camp and said to Kenny, you go over there, And that was the extent of the conversation. Over there was with the defensive backs, and Kenny went and proceeded to play for US. I don't know how many years, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, whatever

it was, it was forever. He was a player with great composure. He could play the ball in the air, all his poise, knew what was going on, was in position as he should be on every play, and even though he was somewhat slight and billed, he was a firest tackler, one player. One maneuver he had that was his alone. I've seen other guys do it, but not not do it as a regular routine, or they would do it just on occasions when it happened without thinking.

Kenny do it purposefully. He would come up on these guys who caught the ball in front of him, and as they were catching the ball looking back towards a line of scrimmage, he'd come from behind and hit him right under the rump and they would go for a cart wheel in the air, literally, and not all of them kept the ball. When that went on, he would dislodge the ball from them. But it was a maneuver that was routine for him, and I've often wondered why others didn't pick it up and do it as just

a regular way of play. It didn't seem to hurt anybody. They went for a ride, but they all came down in a heap and got right back up. It wasn't injurious. It was just enough of a blow that it caught their attention. It would catch your attention if you saw it as well. So Kenny had the ability to be rough and tough as well as smart. And he's so deserving. Everyone knows that he should be in the Hall of Fame, and why he isn't as a mystery, but certainly he'll

be an armoring of honor soon enough. Long before there were great receiving tight ends like Tony Gonzalez and Travis Kelsey, the Bengals helped pioneer moving the tight end all around the formation with a twelfth round draft pick named Bob Trump. He Trump had a storied relationship with the Bengals as a player. As an announcer, he became a public figure here locally as a radio call in show host. He

was good at that. But as a player when he started out here, he was probably off size for where we put him tight end, but he could really run and he would take cover too. That's when they have two safeties in the middle of the field run right through it and they couldn't keep up with them. The safeties couldn't keep up with them alone, let alone the linebackers.

He made big plays for us. It helped that Greg Cook was the quarterback for him one year when Greig was our quarterback before he got hurt, and then Kenny Anderson came along. Bob bought the attention of other teams that we played at. Kansas City, for example, at that time, was the top team in the league, and they wanted to trade for him right away after we played them, and I always remembered how insistent they were, and that

was a no go with us. We had Bob for a long career here as a tight end, and he was a receiving tight end, but a willing blocker. He would face up on guys and he wasn't afraid to do it. But as a receiver, he was as good as they came at his position. Finally, a linebacker from your alma mater, Dartmouth College, who was a Bengal starter for fourteen years, Reggie Williams. Reggie and I both went to Dartmouth, so when he came along up there. I

was anxious to get him for US. I knew about him, and Dartmouth isn't so much a powerhouse as a football team and Ivy League team. I think Dartmouth did win the national championship in the twenties one time. Flad Reggie came along much after that, and at Dartmouth today he's considered the best player they've ever had here. He was very athletic, very willing, very competitive and determined, and he was a steady player for US for I think fourteen

or fifteen years, whatever it was. I played a long time, and he was smart as well as tough. Now that you're going forward with a ring of honor, how do you feel about it? All the public ones that And on a personal level, my granddaughter who works for US now, Elizabeth, she's pretty keen on what the public wants and she told me so. So we are going to go forward with this. I might have had thoughts about why it might wait for a later but we're going forward and

public has reacted very well. They appreciate the fact that we're going to have it, and the old players like it. That's the part that has meant the most. To me. They really perked up their ears when this started. They want to be involved with it. It's something that gets their interest, so we'll try to do it right. I think it'll be well received. We're going to make it a process that goes on for a number of years, and we're gratually going to build up the players who

are included as the years go on. But it'll be fun as we go through it, no question about it. This has been a treat for me. I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. We'll enjoy doing it too. Thanks to Mike Brown, and if you're a season ticket member, perhaps Mike's memories will impact your vote. Once again, it gets underway on Monday morning at nine am. That's going to do it for this episode of the Bengals Booth Podcast, brought to you by bud Light Seltzer. Refresh the game.

If you haven't done so already, please subscribe and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment that helps more Bengals fans find this podcast. I'm Dan Horde and thank you for listening to The Bengals Booth Podcast.